by Jay Onrait
For those of you who’ve read my first book, Anchorboy, you may recall my writing about a press junket I attended for the movie Blades of Glory that was so stressful that I sought out recreational drugs on Venice Beach for relief. While walking along the crazy and eclectic Venice Beach strip with its cheap T-shirt stores, art stands, and head shops that day, I stumbled upon something I had never seen before: men and women in their early twenties, dressed in electric green hospital scrubs, amiably corralling tourists into their oceanfront offices to get medical marijuana cards.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: Weren’t those “offices” just dressed-up tourist traps? And with a little effort and research, couldn’t you have found yourself a much safer and cheaper option? The answer was a resounding “yes” on both counts. But, as had been a pattern for much of my life, I tend to take the easy way out, which is often the more expensive way. I could wander down to the beach, grab some lunch from one of the food trucks, and then casually enter one of the many “doctor’s” offices with all the other tourists, who wouldn’t even notice I was there anyway. Besides, it said $40 on the big marijuana leaf outside the office—how much cheaper could a card be than that?
So I made my way down to Venice Beach that warm fall day in November and walked into the first doctor’s office I could find. I was a little disappointed that the neon green hospital scrubs crew weren’t on duty; instead, only one person was working at a small desk in the corner of what looked like an actual doctor’s waiting room. The only difference was that this doctor’s office was open to a beachfront walk that featured a lot of fascinating smells: sweat, barbeque, patchouli, weed, ass—you name it, the smell was there in the stifling heat that fall afternoon. The doctor’s office did not smell like weed; it just smelled like an old building that hadn’t been cleaned in decades.
I approached the young girl at the desk, probably mid-twenties,who was dressed in hospital scrubs that were actually neon blue. She gave me a series of forms to fill out and asked for a photocopy of my driver’s licence. There was no turning back now; they were going to have a copy of actual government identification that I had been issued just a week prior. I tried not to think of what they could do with that newly issued government ID as I sat down in the waiting area next to a very young skateboarding couple—the girl at least ten times hotter than the guy—and another older woman my mom’s age who said she was from Denver and asked me if she would be able to qualify for a card with a Colorado driver’s licence. I apologized for not having the answer and wondered why she would even bother since Colorado had just voted to become the first state to fully legalize the sale and purchase of marijuana for recreational use. Following a nice exchange with the lady, I looked down at my sheets of paper on a clipboard and began filling them out.
Normally, Chobi fills out all forms in our household, and before you chastise me for being lazy I will point out that she does it because she loves it. During my speech at our wedding, I specifically praised the “inexplicable joy she gets out of filling out forms” to knowing laughter from her family and friends. But she was not here to help me now. I was going to have to do this on my own.
Turns out I wasn’t there on my own.
Shockingly, this particular operation wanted to make it very easy for you to obtain your “green” card. So easy in fact that they refused to even leave it up to chance. Under the question “For what medical reason do you feel the need to obtain a medical marijuana card?” instead of a few blank lines where one could possibly bullshit their way into a corner like they were writing a high school English exam, the sheet listed ten possible ailments with a box to check beside each of them. In other words, there was literally no wrong answer. “All you have to do is check one, you idiot,” the sheet of paper seemed to be saying. So I checked one: insomnia. As a kid I suffered from crippling insomnia and as an adult it had never really subsided, but nowadays I just chalked it up to the massive can of Yerba Mate I drank at work every evening (“made from the naturally caffeinated leaves of the celebrated South American rainforest holly tree”), as opposed to any minor or major existing medical condition. Nonetheless, “insomnia” seemed like a perfectly legitimate answer, whether it was presented to the doctor I was about to see or to the authorities who could potentially have me deported.
After filling out the rest of the forms with as little information as I possibly could, I was told to wait a little longer because the doctor had not yet arrived. I pictured a nice hippie type—maybe he’d had a private practice for a few years in Brentwood and then decided to cash out and become a beach bum while doling out weed cards in between catching surf breaks. Or perhaps it was a younger, just-out-of-med-school guy who had walked the straight and narrow all his life and now, explicitly defying his traditional Jewish parents, he had become a convert to all the good pot can do for the body and soul and had begun dispensing cards for the one drug his parents couldn’t tell their friends about. It was the perfect act of rebellion. I was genuinely curious who might be on the other side of that rather shabby looking wooden door to the doctor’s office.
“Jay, the doctor will see you now,” said the girl at the front desk. Rather dour and serious for someone working reception at a medical marijuana establishment, I thought.
I took a few steps toward that wood door, the paint peeling and chipping away after years of contact with salty ocean air. I opened it up, expecting to see lava lamps and psychedelic posters on the walls, and instead I saw nothing. Absolutely nothing. There was a large desk and chair, and that was it. They both looked secondhand. There was wood panelling on the walls from the 1970s like the kind in the den of the Brady Bunch house. There were no medical charts or posters, not even a diploma on the wall. Was I being set up? Was I on a reality show? To Catch a Pothead?
And just like that, without warning, the doctor entered the room.
He might have been eighty. He might have been ninety. He was definitely well past retirement age and had probably come back to work here because the money was just too good to pass up. He was about five-foot-seven, with grey, thinning hair, and wore glasses that would not have been out of place on Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys. Thick, round, and plastic, they were more like magnifying glasses, and his eyes were so huge behind them I thought for a second he might be a Muppet. He wore a sports jacket made of heavy wool, with patches on the elbows, like a professor who had just landed his first postgraduate teaching job at a Midwestern college and was trying to look the part. Then there were the pants. In my brief time in Los Angeles I had never seen a single person wear corduroy pants, not even in the deepest hipster pockets of Highland Park and Los Feliz. The weather was simply too warm for such a thick and durable garment. This did not deter this particular doctor, however, who was wearing perhaps the thickest pair of corduroys I had ever seen in my life. I could only imagine how sweaty his undercarriage must have been. His shoes were black and chunky, and he walked with a cane. The whole look screamed: “I’m not from these parts.”
I was in temporary shock when he opened his mouth to speak.
“Hi,” he said plainly. He didn’t bother to ask me my name. He likely didn’t bother to ask anyone’s name. This was an assembly line and the work needed to be completed quickly.
He walked around me as I sat in the room’s only other chair directly across from the empty desk. He walked—slowly—around the desk and with a heavy sigh collapsed into his chair and looked up at me. The whole process likely took as much as forty seconds.
“So, you would like to begin receiving medicine?” he asked. The dour girl at the front desk had corrected me when I had called it “medical marijuana.”
“We call it medicine around here. This is a doctor’s office,” she’d said.
Right, right, I thought. Wink, wink. I got it. I could play along. No problem.
“Yes, I would like to begin receiving medicine. New to the state, just moved here.” I had no idea what I was saying. I was really, truly awful at small talk—al
ways have been. Why was I so nervous? I paid forty hard-earned dollars to sit here! I was fidgeting in my seat, and in the sweltering office I was beginning to sweat where I always did: above my upper lip. The sweat ’stache. How exactly was this doctor not passing out from heat exhaustion in those heavy corduroys?
The doctor took a second to look over the sheets I’d filled out. I thought for a moment he might actually just fall asleep right in front of me, but then he looked up again.
“Insomnia, right?’
“That’s right. I’ve always struggled with it. I’ve found that mari—sorry—the medicine has really helped me get a better night’s sleep over the years.” That was technically true, but it wasn’t before I watched four or five episodes of Seinfeld and scarfed down a whole container of olives and maybe played a few Steely Dan records and wondered why I didn’t play my Steely Dan records more often. After all of that nonsense I would sleep great, sure.
The doctor paused and then looked down at my sheets of paper again.
“What about stomach pain? Do you ever have stomach pain?” he asked.
That was a weirdly specific question.
I thought about it for a few seconds, then answered somewhat sheepishly, “Uh, yeah, as a matter of fact, I’ve always had a bad stomach.” This was very true. Why didn’t I put that down as my reason for needing medicine?
He looked back down at the papers.
“What about back pain? Ever have any back pain?” he inquired.
“You know what? I do. I do suffer from occasional back pain. I guess it’s a product of being tall. I’ve always had a stiff back.” I don’t know why I was extrapolating at this point as the doctor was already ignoring me and jotting down notes.
What was going on here? It was almost as if this doctor wasn’t a doctor at all but my lawyer who was building a case to defend my reasoning for needing medical marijuana. It was as if this doctor’s office was not entirely on the up and up. At that moment, all I wanted was to get out of there so I could take a long cold shower and wash away the smell of freshman dorm that had started to permeate my clothes.
“Okay, stand up,” he said. “I need to examine you.”
Oh, no. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Was the doctor turning on me? Was he about to argue for the prosecution and come up with reasons why I shouldn’t be given a medical marijuana card? Or was I about to get a greased-up wrinkly old finger in my ass? This day was certainly turning out to be interesting, that’s for sure.
I stood up, and out of the desk drawer the doctor retrieved . . . a stethoscope. A real live medical instrument. I suddenly felt at ease. This guy was legit! The doctor instructed me to stand by the side of the desk and he pressed the stethoscope against my chest through my T-shirt. I could hardly blame him. I wasn’t exactly wild about the idea of exchanging bodily fluids with the skateboarding couple who had been called into the office just before me. After checking my heartbeat, the doctor asked me to breathe in and out while still holding the stethoscope to the centre of my chest. Then he turned around and sat down.
I was expecting an examination a bit more thorough than the kind Dan O’Toole’s three-year-old daughter might perform on me with her playtime doctor’s kit, but I was also thankful that I would clearly not be getting a wrinkled finger up my ass. He looked down again at the papers and started writing. Finally, after another minute of silent confusion, he spoke.
“I approve you for the use of medical marijuana,” he said. And that was that.
He told me to return to the waiting room where I expected to have another chat with ol’ dour puss at the front desk. I suspected I would probably have to hand her some hidden fee of twenty or thirty bucks—grease the palms if you will. But as soon as I walked up to her she told me to “sit down” because someone named Tania had just stepped out and would be right back to see me. Who the hell was Tania? What was going on here? I had filled out the entirely unofficial and institutionally suspect medical forms. I had been examined by a doctor who had probably been sued for malpractice back in the ’70s and had very likely just returned from some Mexican exile where he performed discount appendix operations until his eyes gave out. Now, I had to wait for some woman named Tania?
The wait was longer than my patience was able to tolerate. The skateboarding couple and the mom from Colorado were long gone. I suspected the mom just gave up and left, while the skateboarding couple were probably at the dispensary choosing between Cheeba Chews THC gummies and cookies laced with sativa. Meanwhile, a real douchebag-type wearing baggy cargo shorts and a muscle shirt, about fifteen pounds overweight, sat next to me and began talking on his phone, loudly telling the guy at the other end that “he had just landed and he was getting his card so they would be set for Saturday.” Subtle, dude, real subtle. Maybe think about the people like me who need this medicine to fall asleep, settle my stomach, and fix my back before you shoot your mouth off about your bong party, okay?
When I was just about at my wit’s end, Tania finally sauntered in.
Her sartorial sense could be best described as “Eastern European gypsy” mixed with a dash of Mrs. Roper from Three’s Company. She was probably in her late forties or early fifties with long blond hair. She made a quick stop at the front desk to tell dour girl about the lunch she had just consumed down the beach and then after some back and forth turned around to me and said, “Jay?”
“Yep,” I replied.
“Come with me.” And with that she walked into the other office next to the waiting room. Perhaps now I was going to get that finger in my ass I had been daydreaming about.
I entered Tania’s office and was not at all surprised to find a similar desk and two chairs like those in the doctor’s office. But there was another piece of furniture there that did surprise me, if only for a second. At that point, I came to the very quick and correct conclusion that I was about to be ripped off.
“Why do you have an ATM machine in here?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Well, you know,” she started—her accent was thick. Maybe she really was a gypsy. She was most definitely Eastern European. “Many of our customers don’t want to use their credit cards. Do you know what I am saying? I want to make it convenient for them to pay for their cards, so it’s simple. I have machine put in here and it’s simple.” Simple. It was really very difficult to argue with that logic.
“So you have different choices,” said Tania, as she showed me a laminated sheet of paper with several different options. I could buy a licence for six months for $200, nine months for $250, or get an entire year of access to the green stuff for the tidy sum of $300.
This was the moment when most patrons would likely have shown themselves out. There was very little question I was getting ripped off here, but there was another question at hand that often presents itself in situations like this: Do I really feel like going somewhere and doing this all over again? On this particular day, the extra expense was worth it to me, and I didn’t even have to use that dirty ATM machine that was staring back at me as I pondered my decision. I had just signed a big new contract with Fox, and this was one of those times when I was going to make a very foolish financial decision for convenience’s sake. Because, hey, maybe I wanted to use this licence at some point in the next year, and because I happened to have $300 cash on me at that very moment.
“I’ll take the $300 year-long licence, please.” For Tania, hearing that sentence was probably better than sex.
“Wonderful,” she said with a smile. I was happy to make her day. Tania then turned back to her desk to fill out the official documents. The first would be best described as a certificate, the kind of certificate a five-year-old might get for graduating kindergarten. It consisted of one thick sheet of paper with an official-looking handwritten font that declared me eligible to receive medicine thanks to the thorough medical examination given to me by this very shady doctor. The sheet of paper even featured an embossed gold star in the top corner to make it look pr
operly official. I wondered aloud how many potheads had it framed above their beds.
Tania then went to work on putting together my official California medical marijuana card. She appeared to be deep in concentration. After a minute or so, she turned around and handed me my card. It was the size of a regular business card, but it had two sides and folded like a menu. It was also made of cheap, cheap Bristol board, the kind used to make posters for high school dances and student council election campaigns. It was so cheap I thought it might fall apart in my fingertips. On the front of the card she had simply written, in ball point pen, my name and the date the card expired. On the back there was the same embossed gold star and the doctor’s website. She then stood up and took the card from me.
“I’m just going to get the doctor’s signature on the card. I will be right back, honey,” she said with a smile, as if she had just made all my dreams come true with the cheapest looking piece of “official” medical stationery since the instructions to the Operation! board game.
Two minutes later she returned with the card now adorned with the doctor’s signature. I left the office like I was leaving a strip club. I felt like I needed a shower to wash off the stench of being ripped off so terribly. Still, I had to admit that I got what I came for. I had managed to secure a medical marijuana card in the great state of California with only a driver’s licence, $300, and a bit of charm. Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo had been right.
The next day, I showed up at the Fox studios proud of myself for actually accomplishing my mission without the assistance of my handler, Susan, or my wife, Chobi. As I recounted my adventure to the Fox Sports Live crew, I reached into my wallet to show off my fancy new medical marijuana card, but it was nowhere to be found.
I’d lost it.
Somewhere between that shady doctor’s office on the Venice Beach strip and my beachfront condo in Santa Monica, I must have tried to pay for a pupusa from a food truck, and my beautiful, almost completely legit medical marijuana card had fallen to the ground. The whole adventure had been for nothing—not to mention the $300 I’d paid to Gypsy Tania. What a waste!